Defunder? I hardly know ‘er - Part I: History of the Police

Throughout the nation, there have been calls to defund the police, and while this is not a new notion, it is certainly one that is in the spotlight now. If you are like me (white, middle-class), you may also have had the privilege to have never really considered the police (beyond crime shows) or to not understand what defunding the police actually means. I definitely did not know what that statement meant or what the movement meant as a whole, so I decided to educate myself about what it really means. I feel like I am behind the curve on this, but I’m trying to catch myself up.

To be completely transparent, because of my identity and probably luck, I have not had any significant interaction with law enforcement. In fact, I would say my only personal interaction with law enforcement would be family members in law enforcement and only professional interaction would be with school resource officers and one time I was in a car accident with a friend and police officers responded, and even then I didn’t really interact with anyone because I was a passenger. So in summary, my only interactions with law enforcement have been positive/neutral (in the sense that there have been no negative impacts on me).

Another caveat to this information: I don’t have the time or resources now to peruse historical documents first hand, so I am compiling information from sources I trust. I am doing my best to sort through sources, and be critical about the information I see.

While I had intended for this to be a longer, comprehensive post, I have had limited internet access over the past few week, and have decided to break this post into several smaller posts (because when faced with a large task, I tend to not do it until I have sufficient time to tackle it, and I don’t have large chunks of time to spend with biking and working, so I need to hold myself accountable by taking on smaller pieces tasks). In order to establish a strong foundation in understanding defunding the police, I have chosen to start with looking at the history of the police, something I have the privilege to have never considered before.

I know there are probably a lot of great resources out there, and I chose to look at:

A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing from Victor E. Kappler (Professor and Dean of the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University), P.D. from Eastern Kentucky University Police Studies (maybe not the best source, but it gave me a foundation to start with)

How the U.S. Got Its Police Force by Olivia B. Waxman, white staff writer for Time

The History of Policing in Creating Social Order in the U.S. - A conversation between Ailsa Chang of NPR and Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University.

The Curriculum now being used in training Austin police officers linked in this article

This is what I learned:

Police departments like we know today NOT been part of our country’s history since it was founded. However, modern police departments do have roots in more informal policing that has been happening since settler-colonists came to occupy this land in the 17th century which was shaped by slavery and the control of minorities. The first publicly-funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time in Boston in 1838. The idea was for businesses to protect their property and transport of goods, and citizens would pay for it because it was sold as for the “collective good.” In the South, primary policing institutions were Slave Patrols and Night Watches were designed to control the behavior of minorities, maintain economic order, and recover and punish slaves who were considered property. The first formal Slave Patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. Slavery was not only entangled in policing but in the laws enacted in state and national government. These included laws to criminalize and control slaves as well as fugitive Slave Laws which allowed the detention and return of escaped slaves. During the Civil War, the military was the primary law enforcement in the South, and during Reconstruction, local sherrifs often worked in ways similar to Slave Patrols (enforcing segregation and disenfranchisement of free slaves). By the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces, in response to fear of labor-union organizers and large influxes of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants and interest in preserving the version of law and order promoted by dominant interests. During this time, police captains/sergeants for each precinct were often picked by political party leaders who often ran street gangs and intimidated voters. Political party leaders were able to use the police to harass opponents. This was changed in 1929 after President Hoover conducted an investigation of the ineffectiveness of law enforcement, and police precincts were changed so they did not correspond with political wards and lead to the professionalization of police.

In a conversation with NPR's Ailsa Chang and Rutgers University's Chenjerai Kumanyika, Kumanyika said “Well I once heard Marc Lamont Hill say the problem isn’t that the police are broken and we need to fix it. The problem is that the police are working and we need to break it.”

I am a brother of Kappa Kappa Psi, a band service fraternity, and spent my time as an active brother in a chapter at UCF in a group of brothers that generally included no more than 40 active members. As a member of our leadership board for a year, we would often talk about changing our culture, and even when other members seemed to be on board, it seemed that our culture would never shift. When trying to change culture, you inevitably have older members reminiscing on how “we’ve always done it this way, so we should keep doing it” who influence new members, so even when some people support the shift, it does not happen consistently through the organization and takes a long time to enact changes. We could never get enough people on board to make intentional change over my 4 year time with them, and that was in a relatively new (about 30 years old), small organization of university students, that had little power over anything. When you think about an institution like the police which is so much bigger, older, and that started out by enforcing slavery and controlling minorities, I can’t even imagine how any change happens at all or how far they could come from what their original purpose without radical, wide spreading changes. Just like my fraternity brothers who did try to change our culture for the better, I’m sure there are pockets of police throughout the country who are doing well in keeping all folks safe. But I think in a similar way to how our chapter culture changed only slowly due to resistant members so established in the current culture, the overall policing system is stuck in a “we’ve always done it this way” system, but theirs is a system that benefits dominant culture while attempts to control non-dominant culture. [Maybe these are too many blanket statements and anyone can call me out on it and push my thinking!] My cousin was a police officer in CT, and passed away a few years ago. Seeing officers he worked with and many others he did not work with honor him at his funeral and stand watch during his wake is truly one of the most moving things I have seen in my life, and a powerful example of what brotherhood looks like. At the same time, in the past few weeks, I have seen stories about “good cops” trying to act in the interest of the community and against injustices seen within their own police departments only to be fired/silenced and otherwise seen as a threat to this “brotherhood” which makes me wonder at the reason it is formed in the first place: to protect and preserve the lives of ALL members of the community or to protect and preserve their own image/privileges. I am someone who works for small, intentional changes, but really if we want huge changes to culture, there needs to be a catalyst. The movement to defund the police certainly seems to be acting as that catalyst. I am actively gaining more knowledge about the movement to defund/abolish the police, that is much more nuanced than its name suggests, and will be summarizing/reflecting what I learn in future blog posts (there’s a lot of information out there to sort through).